Sunday, October 18, 2015

Russians Must Stop Putin’s Wars the Way Americans Stopped War in Vietnam, Ponomaryev Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, October 18 – Speaking at a
small anti-war meeting in Moscow yesterday, Lev Ponomaryev, head of the For
Human Rights Movement, said that Russians must protest against Putin’s wars in
Ukraine and Syria as Americans did about Vietnam and stop them or they will
face even more aggressive wars in the future (vestnikcivitas.ru/news/3882).

The meeting, organized jointly by
the Solidarity Movement and the Party of December 5, attracted several hundred
participants, a few counter-demonstrators who attempted to disrupt it, and the
attentions of the Russian police and OMON who seized several placards with any
mention of Syria (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=56226F60B8F43).

Solidarity’s Sergey Davidis
acknowledged that “today there are not too many of us” but said “this is
understandable: the meeting arose more as a call from the heart than by plan.”
Moreover, he said, “it seemed to us that the authorities simply would not pay
any attention to us.”

He said that he believes that “this
is not the last [such] meeting; the next ones will be larger. By their internal
logic, the consequences of the interference in Syria will only get worse and given
the crisis [in Russia] they will attract greater attention.” But even now, it
turns out, he says that the authorities “are afraid of even a quiet word of
truth.”